LOUISIANA'S EX-GOVERNOR FINDS BRIBERY CASE NO JOKE

Maurice Possley, Tribune Staff WriterCHICAGO TRIBUNE

Despite facing his most serious legal challenge to date, Edwin Edwards, the poker-playing former Louisiana governor on trial for allegedly taking hundreds of thousands of dollars in a casino licensing bribery scheme, still can't resist the urge to crack wise.

Jury selection in his trial was interrupted when Edwards was felled by the flu. As he and his wife, Candy, left the federal courthouse last week, they joined a group of reporters taking the elevator from the third floor courtroom.

"Put that in the news," drawled Edwards, 72, grinning mischievously. His wife gave him a puzzled look.

"Oh," he said innocently, "You're talking about temperature? I thought you were talking about something else."

Laughter from the reporters echoed through the first floor as the elevator doors opened and Edwards strode out the front door, stopping briefly to address television cameras. This, despite a strict gag order imposed on all lawyers and defendants in the case.

Old habits, it seems, are hard to break.

For nearly 30 years, Edwin Edwards has cut a roguish figure in a state where tolerance for corruption is surpassed only by its capacity for excess, most notably in New Orleans, about an hour southeast of Baton Rouge.

First elected in 1971, Edwards is considered Louisiana's most popular governor since Huey Long.

In his first two terms, he wisecracked his way through scandal after scandal, much as Long did in the 1930s and Huey's brother, Earl, did in the 1950s.

Edwards taxed the oil and gas industry to boost government services to the poor and earned a reputation as a man who was as comfortable in the supermarket shaking hands as he was in the governor's mansion entertaining politicians and corporate big shots.

In 1983, a television reporter asked him if he had accepted $50,000 to appoint someone to a state board.

"I don't think it was $50,000," Edwards replied. "I think it was $25,000."

On another occasion, after one of his campaign contributors was jailed for making an illegal contribution, Edwards responded, "It may be illegal for him to give it, but it isn't illegal for me to take it."

Barred by law from serving three consecutive terms, Edwards left office in 1979. When oil revenues dipped and his successor, Republican David Treen, cut government services to balance the budget, Edwards decided to run again in 1983.

"If we don't get Treen out of office soon," Edwards declared, "there won't be any money left to steal."

He spent a week in France with several hundred supporters to celebrate his landslide victory. At Monte Carlo, he picked up $15,000 rolling dice.

But he was charged with racketeering and fraud in a 1986 case that involved the awarding of hospital licenses. The first trial ended in a hung jury.

Authorities tried the case again and his luck held; Edwards was acquitted.

Edwards' natural flamboyance really took center stage in that case. On some days he arrived at the courthouse in New Orleans in a horse-drawn carriage. When he left the courthouse, he was a walking sound-bite. At times, he went straight to a bar in the French Quarter and poured the drinks.

But this is a different case and a different time.

For the first time, federal authorities have obtained the cooperation of some of his friends--accomplices, it is alleged--to testify against Edwards.

Perhaps more significantly, Edwards will have to defend himself against his own words. Federal prosecutors, in a lengthy investigation that began in 1996, bugged Edwards' law office, tapped his phones at home and conducted video surveillance.

Some of the evidence allegedly shows Edwards plotting to illegally eavesdrop on the very FBI agents who were investigating him. In all, agents recorded more than 1,500 hours of conversations.

The star witness will be Edward J. DeBartolo Jr., the former chairman of the San Francisco 49ers, who has pleaded guilty in the case and will testify that he delivered a briefcase containing $400,000 to Edwards to assure that the state gaming commission would grant DeBartolo a riverboat gambling license.

Edwards is on trial with six co-defendants, including his son, Stephen, on a variety of federal charges including racketeering, conspiracy, extortion, money laundering, as well as mail and wire fraud.

A jury and six alternate jurors were selected Monday, and opening statements were set for Tuesday.

An indictment returned in November 1998 alleged that beginning in 1991 and continuing into 1998--two years past Edwards' last term in office--he and his associates extorted about $3 million from riverboat casino applicants in a series of schemes.

Some payoffs were allegedly left in trash bins, others supposedly delivered to Edwards' office, the indictment contends.

The DeBartolo payoff, according to the indictment, was made in San Francisco and came after Edwards handed DeBartolo a piece of paper in a Baton Rouge bar with the figure $400,000 written on it, advising DeBartolo he would have problems getting a casino license if the sum was not paid.

The next week DeBartolo handed over the money in San Francisco and Edwards carried it home in a money vest strapped to his chest, according to the indictment.

Bribery money was used to buy a car and a boat, as well as a cattle ranch in Woodville, Miss., according to the indictment. Prosecutors are seeking the forfeiture of $3.1 million from Edwards, his son and two other defendants in the case.

With the trial to begin, there is a growing sense that Edwards' charmed life may be about to change.

"He's not the first man that did anything crooked in this state," declared Stan Recard, 86. "Everybody takes money, he just got caught."

Sitting on his front stoop just a few blocks from the courthouse, Recard, a mail carrier for 40 years, turned his weather-worn face toward the afternoon sun. "He was a good governor," Recard said. "I don't wish nobody no bad luck. If you can steal without getting caught, well that's your good luck. He didn't do nobody no harm."

Several blocks over, on Spanishtown Road, Kenny Booze, 30, took a break from painting the eaves on a house. "He's beaten cases before, but this time, I think they got him dead to rights.

"He's in a corner this time," Booze continued. "But if he ran again, I think he would get elected again, regardless of the scandals and the casino business and all the poker-playing and gambling.

"He put himself in the community, in the black community," said Booze, an African-American. "He wasn't a bad governor, he would walk into the Winn-Dixie supermarket and be like everybody else.

"He wasn't afraid to walk into small towns and fairs and talk to people--he didn't have a security guard surrounding him. He was there for the people."

U.S. District Judge Frank Polozola has predicted the trial will last about three months.

And this case is not the end of Edwards' legal troubles.

He is facing charges in a separate case alleging he helped an insurance company escape millions of dollars in state payments.

And he was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in a case alleging former Houston Mayor Fred Hofheinz bribed an aide to Edwards in an attempt to win state contracts.

Already, Edwards' style has been cramped. These days, he arrives for court in a Chevy Suburban instead of a horse and buggy.